animals, Mysteries, Nature, Poems

Translation is Everything

30 Comments

Last week I was looking for something online and happened upon Basho’s famous frog haiku.  I’ve seen it before but didn’t realize that this is considered on of the most famous haiku.  This is the most common translation (thanks to Harry Behn):

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond,

Splash!  Silence again.

I couldn’t’ quite think this was the best haiku ever so I dub a little deeper.  Here is actual Japanese:

Furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

This translates literally to this:

Old pond…

a frog jumps in

water’s sound

The translation doesn’t match the 5-7-5 syllable convention, which probably explains why there are so many versions in English.  But I still couldn’t figure out why it was so popular; then I found it narrated in Japanese:

Much prettier sounding – makes more sense why it is one of his best-remembered haikus.  Too bad it isn’t as pretty sounding in English as it is in Japanese.

Do you have form over function anywhere in your life?

30 thoughts on “Translation is Everything”

  1. As a person who is often bothered by imperfection or imbalance where perfection would have been possible, and especially in my own work, I would say yes. Beyond strict utility—“good enough”— there are also esthetics to consider.

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        2. This would be a much better sign, if I still had a cube. The last sign I had in my cube (last summer) was “Not my circus, not my monkeys”.

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  2. I fight the battle of trying to write a “perfect book” every time I sit down at the keyboard. After publishing my first book, I realized that a better goal was the 99th percentile. Those of you who remembered all the standardized tests we took in school back in the 60s & 70s will remember. To me, the 99th percentile translates more to “as good (perfect) as I can make it on this particular day,”

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. Everything Sandra did was form over function. Home design especially. I gave away so much stuff which looked good but could never do the job for which it was supposedly designed, like kitchen utensils hung on the wall. But I just let her because I knew where her life was headed.
      When I built things I struck for a balance. Having toured many FL Wright properties, function had little to do with form as his falling down buildings show. But what magnificent form.

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      1. Yes, love his form. But many of these buildings are also very old now. The Taliesen West home has been well-maintained as a museum. I toured it several times, and what amazes me is the rough edges and “unfinished finishes”. But I appreciate his eye for form and design.

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  3. Rise and Achieve Perfection, Baboons,

    Well, my garden is full, FULL, of weeds after my intermittent absences in June. (I do not remember experiencing June, except being inside a nursing home). Despite that, the veggies are producing vigorously. The cherry tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and banana peppers are demanding daily harvest. So the third of the garden that remains unweeded is producing just as well as the weeded two thirds. I just don’t like it.

    I injected my squash vines with BT to treat squash borers. It appears to have worked. Everyday I go out to inspect for wilted vines, and so far they are still healthy. Could this have worked?

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    2. I have red lily leaf beetles for the first time. Looked them up online, and they have been in Wisconsin since 2014, and appeared in Minnesota in 2020. First sighting in my yard last week.

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    3. I’ve never injected it into anything but I have mixed it according to instructions and sprayed it on spruce trees. It’s very effective. It works by paralyzing the worm’s gut, killing it. Unfortunately it also kills pollinators, especially in their larval stage.

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  5. I have form over function with four picture frames. The frames were professionally done and cost more than the art work itself but add a lot to the visual experience. The shop lady is pleased that it took about an hour for each selection. No rushing.

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  6. Thanks for the sound of the Japanese haiku.

    I usually consider myself somewhat practical, but try to find a compromise between form and function. For instance, almost every piece of furniture we own is second-hand, but each has to be somewhat aesthetic in how it looks – no jarring color surprises, but there is a real mix of old and new.

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    1. Which reminds me of your lovely old oak dining table. Not as elegant, perhaps, as my “newer” sleeker Scandinavian dining table, but so much more practical and easier to insert a leaf into. We have only used that expansion feature in the newer table twice; it’s too damn complicated and actually requires a special tool! That old oak table shows its age with dignity and has a lot more soul than this newfangled teak replacement ever will.

      I put “newer” in quotation marks because it suddenly occurred to me that a lot of people would now describe it as “vintage.” It was manufactured in the 1960ies. Who knows how old your table is. I bought it in 1973 when we lived in Minneapolis, and it was probably at least fifty years old at that time.

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  7. my dad had a perfectionist father who took enough of the fun out of life that my dad made it a point to loudly voice anti perfectionist mantra
    close enough
    make it up on the next one
    we can make it work

    his dad was a bricklayer and if something was off 1/8 of an inch he’d knock it down and start over
    when shoveling the driveway each lift of the shovel blade on the side had to make a perfect level plane with the last scoop so the finished job was flawless

    my dad hated it and passed it on

    i love form from an artsy point of view and will often choose it all things being equal but everyday life calls for get er done more often than not

    i look forward to figuring out how to get my time back into the plus column and i with savor the form of the universe

    today it’s get er done

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  10. I am heavily on the function side here. I want it to work, and I really don’t care how it looks. This is why I am not a fancy pastry maker.

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  12. ABSOLUTELY, The WordPress blog I operate: www aboksu.wordpress.com is my bending the Revised Common Lectionary texts for each week into forms to be sung. When I do that, the words change, the ideas get rearranged, and new stuff gets added, because the form (the tune) governs how things will be arranged. I go a step further, too. The final line on each post is a link to a Youtube video of the thing, with pictures.

    Long term, there’s no hope for these things. Churches that sing off of screens don’t use the tunes I choose, and churches that use those tunes don’t sing off of screens. But, an old guy has got to do something, and this is a chance to play with words and pictures.

    Try it: http://www.aboksu.wordpress.com

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